Friday Fix: Peter Bjorn & John, Dan Deacon, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Peter Bjorn & John – “I Want You!”
(from Living Thing)

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No tambourine. I distinctly remember that from an interview a few years back with Björn Yttling about Writer’s Block and the smashing success of “Young Folks”: as a band, they made a conscious decision to avoid the use of tambourines (instead, they used bongos). But the larger point he was trying to make was that they wanted to avoid the trappings of most rock & roll songwriting clichés — no false buildups, no explosive endings that have nothing to do with a song’s beginning, no moving a song from point A to point B, no cheap surprises, and most importantly, no tambourines. If a song was worth listening to, it would be worth listening to from the very start.

This aesthetic they’ve developed, as pop minimalists, puts constraints on what they can do as a band, but it also forces them to be more creative with less. A simple gesture can take on grand meanings; an echo pedal on a solitary guitar note can make it sound expansive; a sparse, programmed kick drum can feel like a nervous heart beating in its cage; a droopy bass blurt can yearn for Graceland. There are going to be listeners disappointed in Living Thing (where are the hits?), but for me, I find the album endlessly inhabitable. I hear a band making choices, and choosing to do something different with music; distilling pop music down to its essentials and discovering something new at its core that I had been too busy to notice before.

Dan Deacon – “Snookered”
(from Bromst)

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“There is a mountain of snow, up past the big glen…”

I’m not going to lie, every time I listen to Bromst I keep expecting the chipmunk chorus of “Wham City” to erupt behind the next collision of orchestral synths and inhumanly fast percussion. It feels like it’s going to be over the next hill, but always manages to stay just out of reach.

But while I may not get to “Wham City”‘s mountain of snow, on “Snookered” it feels like we’ve been invited to the backdoor entrance of Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Dan Deacon is still operating with the same old tools, but instead of uncontrolled technicolor hyperdrive, he’s exercising restraint and finesse, demonstrating his skills as a producer auteur. It’s no surprise we’re hearing more comparisons to composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley on this new record: compared to Spiderman of the Rings, there are rightful allusions to grandeur on Bromst. Maybe he’s realizing that he’s getting too big for small club performances in the future, which would be a sad thing to pass, but if music like this started populating our orchestra halls I’d probably go out to the symphony more.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”
(from It’s Blitz!)

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I don’t know if I’m ever going to recapture that feeling I first felt when I heard “Bang!” eight years ago, but “Zero” is as close to a perfect pop single as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have ever released. Nick Zinner and Brian Chase get plenty of respect for cementing the band’s new sound: lean, glossy, patent vinyl New Wave with sexual predator dance prowess. But it’s Karen O who reasserts herself as a justifiable 21st century punk rock icon — taunting, vulnerable, confident, seductive, and dangerous. And that note she hits at 3:11 is just, wow, too ecstatic for words. This song is like a feral tiger on a leash, ferocious but restrained, ready to break loose at the slightest provocation.